Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

Academic and diplomatic career

Mohamedou was born in Atar, Mauritania. He studied in Spain, France and the United States, where he earned a PhD in Political Science at the City University of New York. In 1996, he was Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University and in 1997 Research Associate at the Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations in New York.

He was Director of Research at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, located in Geneva, from 1998 to 2004, where he conducted research on national human rights institutions, journalism coverage of rights issues, and co-authored a report on the persistence and mutation of racism and economic exclusion.

From 2004 to 2008, Mohamedou was Associate Director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University where he founded the Transnational and Non-State Armed Groups Project.

He was appointed as Ambassador and Director of Multilateral Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation in Mauritania in 2008, and subsequently Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. He went back to academia in 2009.

He teaches in the International History Department at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva since 2010, and was Deputy Director and Academic Dean of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy from 2014 to 2017. He is a Lecturer at the Doctoral School at Sciences Po Paris since 2013.

Since 2014, he is a Commissioner in the West Africa Commission on Drugs (WACD) appointed by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, and, since 2017, a member of the High Level Panel on Migration set up by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the African Union.

As an author

Mohamedou wrote an influential book on Al Qaeda entitled Understanding Al Qaeda: The Transformation of War which was published in 2006 (in the United Kingdom) by Pluto Press, and 2007 (in the United States) by the University of Pennsylvania Press. An expanded and revised version retitled Understanding Al Qaeda: Changing War and Global Politics was released in 2011.

Reviews of the book highlighted its innovative nature, "refreshing and rational" approach, and sharp language reminiscent of critical theorist Slavoj Žižek. Columbia University's Mahmood Mamdani has noted that "Mohamedou provides a much-needed secular understanding of Al Qaeda. Unlike most writers, he insists on understanding the changing significance of Al Qaeda's discourse against a historical backdrop", while Emory University's Abdullahi An-Naim pointed out Mohamedou's "sober analysis" as "essential reading". One reviewer noted that: "[Mohamedou] has presented an entirely new perspective on the subject. This makes the book a must read, for scholars as well as students of international politics." Indeed, Mohamedou's insistence on treating Al Qaeda as a political rather than religious group has led to his characterization as "perhaps the first liberal to attempt a fully secular understanding of Al Qaeda".

Mohamedou is also the author of Iraq and the Second Gulf War: State-Building and Regime Security. Originally published in 1998 by Austin & Winfeld in San Francisco and reprinted in 2002, that book has been considered "a model for further studies on the Gulf War".

In French, Mohamedou wrote Contre-Croisade: Origines et Conséquences du 11 Septembre, an in-depth investigation of the events leading up to and after the September 11 attacks, which was published by l'Harmattan in Paris in 2004 and reissued in 2011 under the title Contre-Croisade: Le 11 Septembre et le Retournement du Monde. An Arabic version was published in 2010.

He has contributed chapters to other books, notably Violent Non-State Actors in Contemporary World Politics (Columbia University Press, 2010), Rethinking the Foreign Policies of the Global South – Seeking Conceptual Frameworks (Lynne Reinner, 2003), and Governance, and Democratization in the Middle East (Avebury Press, 1998).

Among his most influential works is a study on the mutation of the modern forms of war and the rise of transnational terrorism published by Harvard University in 2005 entitled "Non-Linearity of Engagement", from which an op-ed was derived and published in The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

Updating Martin Van Creveld's 1991 "The Transformation of War" and Herfried Munkler's 2005 "The New Wars", Mohamedou's work has been hailed as one of the latter-day most insightful and detached scientific analysis of Al Qaeda, examining in particular the mechanics of its regionalization, franchising, away of what he termed a 'mother Al Qaeda' (Al Qaeda al Oum), and assessing the long-term impact of the new forms of terrorism and 'the militarization of Islamism'.

Mohamedou has also written on democratization issues in other media including Le Monde Le Monde Diplomatique; and Libération appeared on BBC World News, BBC2, Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, Voice of America, Radio France Internationale, France 2, France3, France 24 Deutsche Welle, VPRO, Swiss television, Swiss Radio, NECN and ABC News, and has been a guest-blogger on "The Washington Note" writing on post-9/11 US policy and American society, and the Arab Spring. A regular public speaker, Mohamedou served on the advisory council of the Dart Center for Journalism and Adviser to the Small Arms Survey.

Awards

In May 2016, New African magazine named Mohamedou among the 50 influential African intellectuals.

Notable works

Other articles